Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Guns In Bars, Part Two

As reported, here, at Bad Lawyer the hillbilly state legislators of Tennessee enacted over the Govenor's veto, a bill that enabled morons with gun permits to pack heat in Tennessee bars and restaurants serving alcohol. Because, nothing says "welcome to Junior's Bar-B-Q" like a little gunsmoke. Within a month of the enactment, a state court judge struckdown the legislation.

Well according to our friends at the Tennessean, why little a common sense get in the way of a good time, they are reporting, "Sen. Doug Jackson, the Dickson Democrat who sponsored the original bill, said he plans to file legislation that would allow handgun carry permit holders to take their guns into restaurants and bars that are licensed to sell liquor by the drink. The legislation, which is being reviewed by Senate staff attorneys before it can be filed, would not apply to places that serve beer only."

I worry about the dying out of representative democracy and then you come across this sort of thing, and it gives me pause. Maybe, representative democracy is overrated. These dumb bastards in the state legislature of Tennessee are going to ruin a fantastic and fun tourist industry with their NRA-posturing demagoguery.

11 comments:

I have never understood this level of gun craziness. What kind of world do these people envision, I wonder? Is it some nostalgic longing for the OK Corral and all that? Do they really want to be sitting in a restaurant with their kids and have some drunken fool open fire? I mean, usually I can at least get a little bit inside the heads of right-wing types and see that, from one narrow perspective (usually religious or moral) whatever they're proposing makes some sense, even if I strongly disagree with it. This just doesn't make any sense at all.

When I lived in Germany years ago, I spent some weeks with a German family in Cologne. They had hilarious pre-conceptions of Americans--for instance, they took me horseback riding and they were astonished that I had never been on a horse, or knew how to make it move. I thought the horse didn't know English, so I was using my limited German to tell it to go, move, do something--as it stood inert. My friends expected that I'd be able to leap on the back of this beast and gallop off, I guess. But their larger astonishment was that I didn't own a gun, and didn't wish to own or shoot guns. Based on American film and television they assumed we all had guns--and, this was 35 years ago.

I don't understand "gun-fondling." I do understand that people collect all kinds of things and I appreciate that there is great craftsmanship and artistry even with guns, but I don't get NRA-fueled insanity. If we suffered a fraction of the death and injury thate we do from guns from any other health risk--knowing we could address and abate the risk, I'm confident we would take action. But, noooooo--we suffer gun-related massacres and we seek to expand the places people can fondle their guns.

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2009/12/police_release_details_on_mond.html Here's the story of some asshat who wwent to hit some guy inthe head with his gun and ended up shooting himself in the chest.

My parents lived in Germany for a short period in the fifties. My mother grew up on a farm and was a keen rider and went riding with the local stables. One of the people she rode with was a German businessman who was going to visit his brother who was the sheriff of Santa Fe. He thought he needed to be able to ride, otherwise he would not be able to get around town.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/jan/01/guns--bars-supporters-not-discouraged-poll/--Intersting update, 67% of Tennesseans in a pollcommmissioned by the state's hospitality industry oppose the legislation enabling gun owners to bring guns into bars.